Keyly: A wearable piano aid for music therapy

Keyly is a music therapist at your fingertips--a lightweight wearable that gently guides your hands to play music on the piano. It brings the stress-relieving, cognitive and motor skill-improving powers of music to people who can't afford pianos or therapists and teachers.

Music plays a key part in our lives. Research has found evidence that music therapy can improve motor skills, reduce depression, and lessen stress, especially when the patient is active playing music.

Can we bring active music therapy to those who do not have the resources for therapists or music lessons?

That's where Keyly comes in. It’s a lightweight wearable that will gently guide the user to play songs on the piano.

Keyly removes all of the conventional barriers to piano learning. No piano? you can use the virtual keyboard on the companion app to get a feeling for the instrument. Don't know sheet music? Just choose a song and go play.

Here's what Keyly (the prototype) looks like:

Because of its affordable components, Keyly can potentially introduce the joy of playing piano to many communities worldwide who do not have access to pianos or music teachers.

Keyly and active music therapy reduces symptoms and improves well-being of individuals with a wide range of disorders and conditions, such as dementia, Parkinson's, and autism.

Music therapy has been found effective in improving quality-of-life of a broad range of disorders, such as autism, Alzheimer's and Parkinson patients, as well as reduce stress and improve moods. We believe that Keyly is not merely a piano teaching aid, but will also improve the cognitive and emotional well-being of the user.

We have three targeted outcomes:

1. Demonstrate long-term improvement in quality-of-life and brain health in individuals after using Keyly

2. Deploy Keyly to 10,000 individuals worldwide

3. 50,000 song plays per month to demonstrate sustained long-term interest in Keyly

Survey a large cohort of individuals before and after using Keyly - Demonstrable improvement in quality-of-life of patients

Keep track of deployment - 10,000 Keylys deployed worldwide

Log number of plays - 50,000 song plays per month

Most solutions using modern technology for musical education is still one level removed from the fundamentals of piano playing. For example, apps that light up piano keys still require the user to look at the lights and press the keys at the right times.

Keyly is focused on the actual motion of a finger pressing a key. As far as we know, there are no devices currently on the market that guides your finger to play piano. Keyly removes all barriers between the user and playing music, such as motor skill difficulties, that are not solved by other technologies.

Keyly is designed from top to bottom such that people of all ages, countries, and abilities can begin playing piano with no prior knowledge needed. We will work with both expert piano teachers and players to learn about the correct biomechanics of piano playing so that Keyly guides the users to play with good wrist and hand posture. We will design an effective plan with music therapists on how to target each individual with songs that will bring them the most improvement.

Keyly is designed to be affordable and easy to deploy. We will first pilot Keyly in small groups to see if it empirically improves the brain health of users. We plan to work with schools and institutions such as nursing homes worldwide to provide Keyly to our targeted demographics: children with autism and mood disorders as well as adults with dementia and motor skill difficulties. 

We currently have some funding for building a first prototype provided by MIT Sandbox and aim to raise more funding once a fully-working prototype has been demonstrated. Once Keyly is ready for market, we plan to launch a crowdsourcing campaign for initial scaling-up funding in additional to pitching to investors. We will also work with schools and institutions such as nursing homes worldwide to deploy Keyly to children and adults that would benefit from music therapy.

The kinematics of piano playing is complex. Fingers move in all three degrees of motion, so we have to decide on the trade-off between providing full guidance of fingers and a lightweight wearable that doesn't make playing difficult.

Furthermore, no one has built such a device that we know of, so we do not know whether using Keyly will actually improve brain health of its users, though we hypothesize that it will.

I am looking for experts who will be able to provide valuable insight on both technical matters, such as the best way to Keyly, as well as the human aspect, such as how to design a self-guided music therapy program built around Keyly and how to deploy Keyly to communities that would benefit from it worldwide.

I am currently working by myself, but I would be happy to partner with interested individuals who have know-how.

Other technologies helping people play piano, for example Synthesia (http://www.synthesiagame.com/)